Gone Surfing 🤙

By surfing, I mean trying so, so hard to get and stay on that damn board, but mostly not. Getting pushed around by the ocean coming and going. Learning to fall off the board and then get out of its way as you roll into shore. Pushing your city muscles to paddle harder and more efficiently. Trying to feel the timing of the ocean as you ready yourself to go from prone to upright.

It’s a lot of work, the good kind. You feel alive in the way that only exerting effort in nature can deliver. Surfing unravels anxiety and primes for sleep, even if you never ride a single wave.

As you read this I am bobbing around in the ocean, maneuvering myself against the current, trying not to think about sharks. I’m kidding, I don’t worry about sharks. I already have so many pointless worries occupying space. No room for sharks.

I will fall, inhale sea water, summon all my strength for a big push and do it again. I will exit the water spent, my skin tingling from salt and chill. Everything after feels glorious. Rinsing off, a bite to eat, maybe even a nap.

“Every disease that is killing us in developed nations has causal and significant links to a lack of sleep,” he says. “So that classic maxim that you may [have] heard that you can sleep when you’re dead, it’s actually mortally unwise advice from a very serious standpoint.”

There will always be an endless list of chores to complete and work to do, and a culture of relentless productivity tells us to get to it right away and feel terribly guilty about any time wasted. But the truth is, a life spent dutifully responding to emails is a dull one indeed. And “wasted”…

In essence, walking had been “more pleasurable” than not walking, even though the walks’ duration had been long, says Martin Niedermeier, a professor of sport science at the University of Innsbruck who led the study.

But walking outside in the serene, shadowed beauty of the mountains provided additive benefits for mood, he says, suggesting that people might be more likely to continue with a walking program on paths and trails than treadmills.